Mom Upset N.J. Wasn't Told of Girl's MRSA ; Notification is Required Only If 2 or More Cases

Oct 26, 01:22 PM

Current Headlines: By MICHAEL GARTLAND, STAFF WRITER

A 3-year-old Garfield girl is recovering from a dangerous and sometimes fatal bacterial infection, her mother said Thursday.

Crystal Ritter said she does not know how her daughter Kyla came down with the staph infection known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, but is upset that doctors and state health officials did not help her get word out to other parents.

"It was never reported when I called the Health Department," she said, referring to the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services. "The only way it got reported was I called."

Tom Slater, a Health Department spokesperson, said hospitals are required only to notify the state agency under very specific circumstances.

When it comes to cases of MRSA that are contracted outside of hospitals, doctors must notify the agency if there is an outbreak when two or more people in a specific area contract the infection but not when it is only one individual.

"Individual cases of MRSA are not reportable. Outbreaks are," Slater said. "We would normally not get involved in a single case."

The MRSA infection has been associated with four deaths among students nationwide in the past two weeks, including a middle school student in Brooklyn on Thursday. The outbreaks have forced schools in a half-dozen states to close.

So far, Kyla Ritter has been able to fight off the infection with the help of medication and surgery. Her mother said she is no longer at Hackensack University Medical Center but is still recovering.

A hospital official would not confirm or deny whether the child was treated there. State officials would not comment on Ritter's case because they said they had no information about it.

Five other North Jersey students have been diagnosed with MRSA over the past month. Two student-athletes from Pascack Valley High School were treated and are now back in class, according to school administrators. A student at Christopher Columbus Middle School in Clifton was treated and released. District officials there would not confirm whether he's back in school. And two students from the Norman A. Bleshman Regional Day School in Paramus were also recently diagnosed with MRSA. The 19-year-old Bleshman student remains hospitalized. The second student was released from the hospital.

Crystal Ritter said that while her daughter was being treated at Hackensack University Medical Center in September, doctors told her the appropriate officials would be notified of her daughter's illness to ensure public safety. But when Ritter called the state Health Department, she said an official there told her the agency was not notified and was not required to provide formal notification to the public.

She said she was worried that other children attending day care at Mount Zion Big Heart Christian Academy in South Hackensack might also be affected, so she called them herself.

In New Jersey, all hospitals are required to create "screen and isolate" programs to fight MRSA. Hospitals have to identify and test all high-risk patients, even if they have no symptoms. Those who have infections are isolated, as well as those who carry the bacteria but have no active infection.

It is unknown how many hospital patients have MRSA because New Jersey's hospitals aren't required to report these cases.

Governor Corzine has said he expects to sign a law requiring hospitals to report the number of cases so consumers can decide which hospitals are safest.

He and Ritter are not the only ones raising concerns about notification.

The family of a 19-year-old student at the Bleshman School in Paramus contends the school took weeks to notify parents with children there.

Officials from the school said the family told them that the student had a staph infection in early October, but were not aware that it was MRSA until the middle of the month.

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E-mail: gartland@northjersey.com

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